Israel plans to evacuate settlers from Gaza and part of the West Bank starting next week, its first withdrawal from occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state. Here is how the pullout is to be implemented:• Settlers still in their homes on August 15 will be given 48 hours to leave or face ejection by police and troops. Officials expect many of those holding out will leave at this point• Non-residents—mainly radical Jews from the West Bank who slipped into Gaza settlements—will be removed• Evacuation of homes will start on August 17. Unarmed squads of 17 soldiers each, male and female, will go door to door asking settlers to leave• If need be, soldiers will break into homes to remove the occupants. Arrests will be a last resort• About 50,000 troops have been assigned to extract settlers or to ward off Palestinian attacks or infiltration by Jewish protesters, with six concentric rings of deployment• Soldiers are under orders not to use firearms in removing recalcitrant settlers unless their lives are put in danger• Evacuation of 8,500 settlers from all 21 Gaza enclaves will take two to three weeks. A few hundred settlers in four West Bank settlements will be removed in early September• There will be no evacuations on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath• Once out, the settlers’ belongings to be packed into containers by three designated moving firms• Settler homes and synagogues will then be demolished. Israel and the Palestinians have yet to agree on how to deal with the rubble• Soldiers will transfer 48 settler graves to Israel• Troops will pull out of Gaza after dismantling bases• Israel’s security establishment wants the pullout to be completed by October’s Jewish High Holidays• Palestinians will be able to enter at this point and they have drawn up plans for major celebrations. Palestinian security forces will be on alert to keep order, with their primary challenge controlling militant groups and possible looters. —Reuters
